NOMAD is a performance series looking to interrogate the artist's relationship to self | place | community—how the bodies & spaces we inhabit create the myths that inhabit us.

When: 10.8 | 4:30P

Where: Branch OFC | 225 Rogers Ave. | Brooklyn NY

What up: Free Admission. It's still nice out—we'll be outside until we can't be. Drink specials, named after our readers. Yours truly, hosting.

DESIREE C. BAILEY was born in Trinidad and Tobago, and grew up in Queens, NY. She is the author of the fiction chapbook In Dirt or Saltwater (O’Clock Press, 2016). Her poetry and fiction has been published in Best American Poetry, Callaloo, The Rumpus and Transition, among other publications. She has an MFA from Brown University and has received fellowships from Princeton in Africa, The Norman Mailer Center, Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop and Kimbilio. She has also received the Poets and Writers Amy Award. Desiree currently a Writing Corps facilitator at Harlem Children’s Zone and an English instructor at BMCC.

CAMONGHNE FELIX, M.A. is a poet, political strategist, political media junkie and cultural worker. She received an M.A. in Arts Politics from NYU, an MFA from Bard College, is a Cave Canem Fellow, a 2012 Pushcart Prize nominee, and the 2013 recipient of the Cora Craig Award for Young Women. You can find her work in various visual spaces, including Youtube, and in publications like Apogee, Union Station, and Poetry Magazine. She is also the author of the chapbook Yolk, published via Penmanship Books in March 2015 and in May of that year was listed by Black Youth Project as a "Black Girl From the Future You Should Know.

MONICA MCCLURE is the author of the poetry collection, Tender Data (Birds, LLC, 2015) and the chapbooks, Mood Swing (Snacks Press 2013), Mala (Poor Claudia, 2014), and Boss Part 1 and Boss Part 2 (If A Leaf Falls Press, 2016), and Concomitance (Counterpath Press, 2016). Her poetry and prose has been featured in NPR, The Huffington Post, Tin House, Jubilat, Fence, Flavorwire, The Hairpin, Poetry Foundation, The Los Angeles Review, The Lit Review, Emily Books, The Awl, and elsewhere.

An evening of poetry readings presented by The Offing at Decolonize This Place, featuring:

Jayson P. Smith, Falu, Camonghne Felix, Desiree Bailey, Jose Olivarez

Hosted by Mahogany L. Browne and Paul Tran

The Offing is an online literary magazine publishing creative writing in all genres and art in all media. The Offing actively seeks out and supports work by and about those often marginalized in literary spaces, including Black and Indigenous people, and people of color; trans people, cis women, agender, gender non-conforming, genderqueer, two-spirit, and non-binary people; intersex people; LGBQA (lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, asexual/aromantic) people; people with disabilities; and especially people living at the intersections of these identities.

Decolonize This Place is a movement space that is action-oriented around indigenous struggle, black liberation, Free Palestine, global wage workers and de-gentrification. Facilitated by MTL+, Decolonize This Place is located at 55 Walker Street, New York.

This will be the first in a series of free events produced and created by Insurgent Poets Society at Decolonize This Place, 55 Walker Street, New York through Fall 2016 that will create a movement for building resistance and community while surviving state-sanctioned violence and gentrification.

Join the celebration of the 5 Year Anniversary of Women Writers in Bloom and the celebration of Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie's new book, Dear Continuum: Letters to a Poet Crafting Liberation! Desiree Bailey will facilitate a panel discussion between Mariahadessa, Gia Shakur, Tim Jones, Charleen McClure and Gabriel Ramirez.

Desiree Bailey will be sharing work from Of the Sweet Waters, a deep-sea poetic exploration of mermaids, black female divinity and the Haitian Revolution. It reimagines the sojourn of Africans over land and sea, questioning the boundaries of bondage, witness and exultation.

Laura Brown-Lavoie will be sharing work from The Farmer and the Selky, a fable, or the two sets of clothes in one woman's closet. It tells of the brief romance between a seal-woman and the farmer she meets on a Rhode Island beach. A mix of poetry, song, dialogue, and Craigslist posts, the story attempts a love beyond captivity, though caught between the land and sea.